Life with Dragons
By Fireshifter
Author's Note:
This story is based off of "Dealing with Dragons" by Patricia Wrede. In this story, Sarah Williams actually lives in the land called Prydain (name based on Lloyd Alexander's five-volume children series: The Chronicles of Prydain), one of the magical kingdoms in the Underground.
Prologue
Sarah's parents were Robert and Lily, (preferred it to Linda). Robert was a wealthy merchant human, whose ancestors had unique and magical gifts and were blessed were long lifespan. However, over the course of time, of many descendants later, the line of gifted and magical humans became dormant because most of them married to ordinary humans and not to other magical beings. However, this trait could be awakened in the next generation if one of Robert's kind married to another magical being, which is exactly what he did with Lily.
Lily was a full blood elf, but she was raised in the world of humans. This was because her mother Tiaonna, was separated from her family during a journey while she was pregnant. But before her family could search for her, they were attacked by an orc raid and were killed, including her mate, Thranduil.
However, the orcs were being hunted by rangers of the north, whose families were also killed by the orcs. They shortly discovered Tiaonna, and brought her to live with them. Thereon, the leader of the rangers, fell in love with Tiaonna, and tenderly urged her to live for the sake of her child, despite her grief, which he knew all too well through his own bitter loss of his own dear wife. Tiaonna, gradually overcame her loss, and grew to love Thereon, whom she married and raised her child with. However, Thereon died shortly after Lily became of age, and although Tiaonna was thinking of returning to the land of her people, Lily fell in love with Robert, and she couldn't bear to leave the only family member she had left.
When Sarah was born, it was then that they realized that Sarah was destined for something special, despite the fact that they were aware she was a Halfling, (meaning half magical and non-magical). When Sarah was born at the hour of dawn, she was delivered by her good friend Morwen, a witch who has midwife skills. As she cleaned Sarah off before handing her to her mother, she noticed there was a unique birthmark behind her right shoulder, which very much looked like dragon. Tiaonna who was there with them, was astonished, and explained the same marking was the emblem of family house: Baequiathem, which meant in the elvish tongue: blessed by dragons.
At Sarah's christening, a soothsayer proclaimed that one day, she would seek the dragons' aid, and in return, she would be the key to saving their kind from a terrible evil.
Sarah's father wasn't present at his daughter's birth or at the christening, since he was delayed by a business trip, so her mother, grandmother and Morwen swore to keep the child's birthmark a secret.
Although no one knew what sort of future lay ahead of Sarah, one thing was certainly clear: Sarah was not like other children in her father's class, and everyone had noticed this. Even at young age, Sarah had her mother's and grandmother's elvish beauty and grace. She had thick locks of wavy chocolate brown hair, fair skin, lithe form, pointy ears, and lovely emerald eyes under smooth dark eyebrows and long eyelashes. Yet, it wasn't long before Tiaonna and Lily discovered that Sarah had an amazing gift at the age of three. Not only was Sarah beginning to speak in elvish and in the common tongue, but Sarah could speak and understand every sort of language known in the underground, including the speech of birds and animals. Although her father just thought Sarah was speaking childish gibberish at the time, Tiaonna and Lily somehow managed to convince Sarah to keep her gift a secret.
Seven Years Later
Three months after Sarah's tenth birthday, Lily fell seriously ill, and despite the healer's best efforts, Lily passed away seven days later. Before she breathed her last breath, she gave Sarah an elf jewel pendant called the Flora Star because swarovski crystal was shaped like a flower secured within a mithril budlike background on a silver chain. Ever since then Sarah kept the Flora Star close to her to heart. The joys of her of carefree childhood life was over, since she had never
experienced such a heart aching pain of losing one so dear to her. Sorrow had never been so real to her as it was now, and she withdrew into herself, though the bond between her and Tiaonna grew stronger than ever since they both lost a daughter and mother, while her father shut himself in his rooms for days, grieving for the loss of his dear wife.
Shortly after Lily's death, Robert's business was taking a turn for the worse, but Sarah's father didn't have the heart to continue being a merchant. So, he decided to sell their home, and much of his belongings to buy a small farm near the Enchanted Forest across the river.
If any other child from the upper class realized that one day his or her family was no longer rich, that they would have to give up the comforts of their rich life, and would actually have to work to help their family support themselves, the chances of them taking it well are very, very slim.
Sarah on the other hand grew to love her simple way life. In fact, even at a young age, she came to the conclusion that being rich was far too overrated. As the daughter of the merchant, all she did or learned besides schoolwork, was proper etiquette and protocol, as well as sewing and embroidery. Although she didn't mind learning about singing and dancing, Sarah wasn't allowed to do anything that wasn't proper for a young lady, although her mother and grandmother thought this was ridiculous. She wasn't allowed to learn how to cook or how to do magic. It was unthinkable for Sarah to learn how to do gardening, to help put the animals in the stables or to do the small bit of cleaning. Sarah had especially wanted to learn how to swordfight and how to use a bow and arrow, but that sort of thing was only allowed for boys. To teach such skills to girl was not only unbelievable and unthinkable—it was just not done, no exceptions!
But since things were different now, Sarah learned how to cook simple but many tasty meals, including desert. She learned not only to keep the house tidy, but she participated in the farm work. She collected eggs and fed the chickens, milked the cows, groomed the horses, and cleaned their stalls. She also learned how to grow and prepare herbs, do the laundry and chop wood. She even arranged secret lessons with an elf sword master, who taught her archery as well.
Sarah loved to learn knew things, as much as she loved a challenge or solving puzzles. Ever since she was little, Sarah loved solving puzzles, and she was pretty good at too. Although she didn't realize how bored she was before she became a farm girl, solving mysteries and riddles were far more interesting than learning how to be a lady.
Unfortunately for Sarah, her simple but interesting way of life ended all too soon. Three years later, when her father gradually recovered from his grief, and had one day encountered an older frustrated gentleman, who couldn't find a foreman to help sell his goods. Robert offered some useful advice, and ended up becoming the gentleman's new man. Shortly afterwards, Robert was introduced to the gentleman's daughter, Karen. Although Robert didn't love Karen as much as he had loved Lily, he was lonely ever since he had lost his wife and wanted very much to please the gentleman, who had frequently hinted that they would do quite nicely together. Karen didn't actually love Robert, but she liked him enough because he was a smart business man and would make her look very respectable, and maybe even rich, since he had good taste when he took her out to the theater or a fancy dinner.
Soon, to Sarah's dismay, Robert and Karen married before they knew each other more than a month. She couldn't help but feel that her father had betrayed her mother, by falling for someone else who was more interested in his skills to make her look respectable in society. Not only that, everything had changed all too quickly.
Karen liked elegant and fine rich things since she was brought up in a wealthy environment. Living on a farm was unacceptable and Robert knew that. So, with the help of his new father-in-law, he bought her a larger and fancier mansion than the one he owned before. Although Karen thought it was just adequate enough, since it had seemed to pale in comparison with some of the mansions she had stayed in, including her father's.
It wasn't before long that Sarah found Karen very trying, if not exaggerating on really bad days. She always had a say in everything that went on, including in Sarah's life, which she really resented. And worst of all, she insisted that things were to be done her way: how things were done, how things should look, and how people should behave etc, especially with Sarah.
By now, Sarah was a bit of tomboy, and many in the upper class considered her strange. Although she liked her dresses from time to time, she would have preferred to wear simple but comfortable, durable pants, shirt and boots. She also liked to do boys things, like running, playing ball, racing on horseback, and of course practicing sword fighting and archery. It wasn't long before Sarah developed a rebellious and stubborn streak to those who told her what she aught to do and not aught to do, thanks to her experience to Karen.
This was not to say Sarah hated Karen, even when she really got on her at times, Sarah knew she meant well, but it a pained her all the same. Karen insisted that Sarah wasn't a proper lady, although she was kind, polite, graceful and courteous. Karen didn't approve of Sarah's activities that were out the normal behavior for girls. She nagged, pestered and argued with Sarah about every detail so that Sarah had to use every ounce of her control not to lose her temper, which often resulted in a huge headache. Regardless of what Karen thought or believed, Sarah didn't care what anyone thought about her. She liked who she was, and if they didn't like it—tough.
A Year Later
When Karen had born a son, she was happy that she had given her husband an heir, but since she had no mother growing up due to her mother's death when Karen was a baby, she didn't know how to be a mother. She left a wet nurse to care for him while she and Robert went out a lot for parties and such, seeing their son only for a few minutes to a few hours a day. Sarah felt she had lost much of the relationship with her father by now, for he only spent a little time with her now.
However, to distract herself from the pain and rejection of her father, Sarah began caring for Toby. Soon Sarah began to develop a strong relationship with her baby brother. She was a more surrogate mother to Toby than a big sister and although Toby was Tiaonna's step grandchild, she grew close to him too, and the three of them spent much of their time together.
Have no fear fans of the Underground Groundhog. I'm still working on it, just have been very busy and I wanted to get this story going.
Beginnings are always the hardest thing for me to write. I welcome comments and healthy criticism, but please, no flames! This is my second story, and I'm sure if the first is going okay.
This chapter was edited by Patricia Cannons whom I am greatly indebted to!